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Thank you, Margo. The reason why I stopped last night was because this is water mixable oil and the slightest moisture from my brush will disturb the oil paint underneath and so my yellow cannot be any brighter than the lower layer because it's still moist. I definitely find this water mixable oil so much more friendly than watercolor. I wouldn't be surprised that one day, I will find that I paint more in oil than any other medium.

Hope to see some of your pastel work too.

In the meantime, last month I have invested in $20 worth of Artist Magazines annual discs at $2 a pop and I finally started reading it. In the 2002 April issue, I realized that green and purple makes blue. It totally vowed me to see the experiments and so I tested it on one of my work place sketch near where I work some months ago.

Stillman & Birn Alpha 100 lb hardbound 5.5 x 8.5 inch.

Holbein Mineral Violet
Phthalocyanine green M. Graham

Technically, purple is a mix of red and blue and green is a mix of blue and yellow. But if we use a different type of violet, eg sap green and carb. violet, it will give you brown instead.

Fascinating.

These two are also on Stillman Alpha same sketchbook.

I rarely used Prisma's Col-Erase even though it is very erasable mainly because it is very hard and it makes indentation on the underleaf and the pages following. I don't always remember to bring an insert buffer and also the colors are not very intense. It's rather pastel like.

But thinking about this Alpha, I gave it a try. The paper is thicker than most paper and even though I rather reserve Alpha for mixed media because it could take some moisture, I am willing to experiment.

It did quite well with the texture.

Yesterday, I found that I actually have three Caran D'Ache Pablo colored pencil one of which is a lime green of some sort. Happiness. I like that color. The other is a normal blue and a normal green. So I went ahead and tried another portrait.

Pentalic 70 lb 5.5 x 8 inch hardbound sketchbook

I was happily fleshing out the nose and eyes and mouth with the lime green here and there and then decided to use some Caran D'Ache Luminance to contrast. Then I experienced for the first time how incompatible the two pencil is. I didn't expect it. Usually, if you put Faber Castell Polychromos or Lyra Polycolor down on first layer - oil based, you could put Prismacolor waxed based color pencil on top without problem. The Luminance didn't want to do fine lines on top of thick patches of lime green. Roll eyes. Luminance is supposed to do be able to do everything. One more reason why I kept holding back not buying Pablos. Never liked how much more pressure I have to use to lay down colors.

So here it is. And I also learnt that color pencils is as exacting as pen work. I used an electric eraser the ground is smudged and it would never be white again with these oil based pencils and it won't jive with the rest of the page.

Not satisfied, I did one in Stillman and Alpha. This time I used Lyra Polycolor and the garment was Lyra and Prismacolor Artstik. I erased the Lyra here and there and it didn't have that residue smudgy problem. I also think it is because Stillman has more texture and could support erasures whereas the Pentalic didn't have any more texture after electric erasures. I'm a lot happier with this piece.

Yesterday, I spent around $180 buying up all the issues of magazines ever produced by Ann Kulberg, the pencil colorist, and a few of her portrait tools set. I read through the new CP treasures collection and it's really worth every cent. There are so many ways to use colored pencils.

Sandra, beautiful still life of your children's toys. Very spooky photo you took of them, very accurate painting. I think the photo must have over-darkened with all that black, your painting looks more true to light. Gorgeous work. Excellent colored pencils portraits too. Yes, CP is a very exacting medium. I never really bothered trying to erase anything in it, just tried to get accurate at the sketch and measurement stage and then lay in glazes of color and burnish them.

Margo, if you want fast drying oils, use Alkyd oils. They still take using thinner but they dry to the touch overnight. This can be a really cool thing if you hate waiting for paint to dry.

Today's daily painting was from life. I volunteered at the food bank this morning - this was the date when my church does the six-church Interfaith Food Bank. I sorted onions and got a beautiful package of - beautiful produce! I'd never seen an Endive before, so I fell in love with the look of this strange vegetable that looked like a giant flower bud.

I have no idea what it tastes like but I gather it's supposed to be eaten raw in salads. I never do salads so I have no idea what to do with it - salad dressings whether vinaigrette or the creamy kind make me vomit, so I'll have a go with olive oil and garlic salt.

Are there vitamins and actual nutrients in lettuces? Are there any calories at all or is it sort of a space-stuffer to keep you from getting hungry when you're on a diet? Is lettuce a real food or a placebo?

How neat that you get to volunteer and get out and about. Your endive and pepper painting looks very real.

Endive is mixed with other green salads to add taste and texture and color. Slightly bitter. Plain olive oil is fine with some black pepper or lemon or vinegar or french mustard (not the American hot dog mustard). It has fibers. Lettuce in general is 90 percent water and doesn't have much fibre but the dark green leaves are better like arugulas, dandelions, spinach. You can also sautee it with a bit of oil if you like.

This was a very mangled piece of watercolor sky and I overpainted it with Stabilo Woody 3 in 1 first, then Caran D'ache Neocolor II, and then for the background, some cheap powdery Michael's pan watercolor.

Stillman and Alpha 100 lb 5.5 x 8.5 hardbound sketchbook

I watched the trailer of the Rise of the planet of the apes. I'll get it next Sunday for a cheaper rental price.

This one is General's woodless pencil 2B and when it couldn't get any darker, General's charcoal stick.

Lovely vegetable painting Robert, utterly spot on with the endive. Thanks for the tip on the Alkyds. I always paint alla prima so I don't worry too much about the drying, I use Lukas 1862 oils and they are very fast drying, one of the reasons I love them, I have a wide variety of other oils, Sennelier, Gamblin, W&N, and who knows what else, love those Lukas though.

Sandra how do you like the Woody's? I bought a set a while back and haven't played with them very much yet, on a mission with watercolor right now. Do you ever play around with the Pentel pocket brush pen? It would seem right up your alley and a wonderful way to do Asian style drawing when out and about. Probably great for your Manga style sketches too. I'm utterly in love with it. Your second ape is awesome! The eyes and attitude on his face is pretty darn scary.

Margo, I use the Woody when I'm really tired to think and be exact - too tired to hold a thin Caran D'ache Neocolor II that I have to remember not to apply too much pressure or it will break and needed something thicker to doodle with and cover what's underneath. While Neocolor II is slightly opaque like gouache when wet, Woody is slightly more so and that's why I could cover the watercolor botch up piece. In fact, it even covers oil stains even after I wash it and that's why I hold on to it still.

Yes, I do own two Pentel pocket brush pen and use it often when I need long clean non stop lines to do figure line drawings. I reserve it for the best of the compositions that Chinese brush and ink can't do because the paintings does not allow re-inking at critical points.

I spent all morning studying for a test and now it's playtime. Will be back with some sketches.

First of all a big thank you to Sandra, Jake, Robert Sir for liking my work. I am satisfied with that piece. Sandra nice sketches by the way...Jake love those toons....Robert Sir...I am still trying to figure out how I can have panpastels...still it is nothing but a dream for me to buy panpastels and paint..... awesome stilllife.....yeah I need Girault too...and I cant have it ...awesome cloudscapes....

Still on Pentalic sketchbook - So glad it's only $4.99 for 220 pages. I could be so free in experimenting.

The opposite facing page of this piece also has pastel ground on. So I did one with Conte crayon. Spreaded all the colors around with felt and then Terry Ludwig soft pastel intense dark.

So the oil pastel one, I sprayed it with Sennelier oil pastel fixative and the soft pastel one, I sprayed it with Krylon.

This one is based on the painting I sketched from the De Young Museum recently. Gustave Grunewald - Niagara Falls

Daler Rowney Simply 5.5 x 8 inch sketchbook 70 lb cream

This paper is perfect for charcoal and soft pastels work.

I was reading the Artist Magazine 2002 and one artist said that whatever painting he does, he always start with a cadmium light red to warm up the background. So I used Conte crayon red and toned it and smudged it all over the page with a piece of felt.

This set of Conte 48 pc set has very good colors but it just couldn't give me the darks I needed and I didn't want to use black. So Terry Ludwig soft pastel intense darks were added.

Sprayed with fixative so I could close the book without worry of transfered dust opposite page.

In real life, this painting was mounting on two frames of over 6 feet long each side. Massive painting. So nice to be able to study it one at my nose at the museum.

If you haven't realized yet, I am one who doesn't like to waste things. For every sketchbook, I ty my best to use every single page back and front. So when I have failure pieces as the previous post for scenery, I try to salvage it.

Thank you so much Sandra.
Awesome sketches ...lovely works.....yes you are right ...I should produce a graphic novel or something...it is tough but I think I can do it. I am having problems with portraits and I have to work hard on them.